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By Mark Arsenault
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Today, Boston set the example of how political rallies and counter-protest should be managed. Everything the Mayor and Boston Police Department said in news conferences prior to Saturday’s rally they executed without a hitch. There were some skirmishes and confrontations but very few. We are all proud of the people of Boston and what Massachusetts and Boston stand for: “peace and love not bigotry and hate.”
“A city with a fraught racial past turned out tens of thousands of protesters Saturday for an overwhelming denunciation of racism, anti-Semitism, and religious bigotry, in a demonstration that was largely peaceful though punctuated with scuffles and some edgy nose-to-nose encounters among demonstrators.
“On a hot, humid day, sweaty throngs on Boston Common chanted — sometimes angrily, often profanely — against Nazis, against racism, the KKK and fascists. They held signs calling for peace, waved the rainbow flag of the gay rights movement and held placards honoring Heather Heyer, a woman killed last weekend opposing white nationalists at a rally in Charlottesville.
“’My co-workers thought I was crazy to come here because a woman was killed last week,” said Ny Martin, 40, of Medford. “But that’s why I had to be here.’
“The local impetus for the massive demonstration on Boston Common was a rally planned before Charlottesville by the Boston Free Speech Coalition, a group that claims to promote open dialogue but that civil rights advocates say is linked to people who espouse racial hatred and violence. Coming a week after the Virginia violence, the Boston “free speech” event generated a massive response by residents and law enforcement.
“’I think it’s clear today that Boston stood for peace and love not bigotry and hate,’ Mayor Martin J. Walsh said.
“Police Commissioner William B. Evans said in a press conference after the event, ‘We probably had 40,000 people out here standing tall...in our city and that’s a good feeling.’
“Nearly all the demonstrators ‘were here for the right reason,’ Evans said, though ‘we did have people who came here to cause problems.’”
